I enjoy dehydrating fruits and vegetables that aren’t typically sold dehydrated. While it’s easy to get dried apricots, for example, it’s difficult to find dried cantaloupe. Since our melons have started producing, I decided to try dehydrating some of the fruit.
I used my own melons from the garden to make the dehydrated fruit. I grew the cantaloupes from seed earlier this year.
First, I cut the melon in half and removed the seeds. Then I cut the rind off and sliced the fruit into wedges and then sliced each wedge into thin strips. I laid each strip apart from the others, so no piece of fruit is touching another.
Melon is really wet. So, using parchment paper can help so it can be more easily peeled off when dry. I don’t dry it until chewy; I go the whole way and dry until brittle. I set my dehydrator for 12 hours at 145 degrees Fahrenheit and then I checked after that to see how things were going. At that point, you can add time as you see fit for where on the chewy to brittle spectrum you want to be.
I use my Cosori Food Dehydrator. The Cosori brand is good and the aesthetic of this dehydrator is sleek. It looks like a small, professional oven instead of other dehydrators out there, which to me look like white plastic donut-shaped toys.
Savillum 